Couwenberg's recent work embodies
synthesis and relational thinking. In
2014, a Smithsonian Artist Research
Fellowship brought her together with
a specialist in vertebrate anatomy
to study the skeletal composition and
skin geometry of fish using new
imaging technologies. The resulting
work fuses patterns and structures
found in aquatic life forms with traditional
textiles and clothing items
drawn from her Dutch heritage. In
addition to fabric panels that pay
homage to 17th-century Netherlandish
damask production while updating
its motifs with details derived
from the natural world, art history,
and personal references, "From Digital
to Damask" features six chimerical
sculptures that interweave surface
and substructure into integral,
complex wholes. Marrying digital
production and handwork, these
intricate forms take off in startling
flights of fancy, teasing out striking
correlations between the naturally
baroque patterning of structural
growth (where form always meets
function) and the outlandishly
impractical (and useless) concoctions
of human fashion.

Dense and evocative in terms of
materials (paint, organic matter, clay,
ash, lead, and found objects) as well
as sources (alchemical treatises,
mythology, Jewish mysticism, and
modern history), Kiefer's paintings,
sculptures, and installations offer an
almost endless palimpsest of discoveries
and possible interpretations.
The works in this show, including
plaster sculptures and vitrines filled
with molds, dried plants, stones, and
fabric, venture into new terrain,
guided by a sustained engagement
with the sculptures and drawings of
Auguste Rodin. In 2013, when Kiefer
visited the storerooms of the Musée
Rodin (filled with plaster casts and
fragments of sculpted body parts), he
was particularly struck by erotically
charged drawings and Cathedrals
of France (1914), Rodin's only book.
These discoveries revealed unsuspected
affinities, which are well
explored in "Kiefer Rodin," a show
that also includes rarely seen works
by the Symbolist master. A shared
fascination with architecture
and ruins as stand-ins for humanity
becomes quickly evident, but more
importantly, the two artists treat artmaking
as an ongoing process of
reconfiguring, assembling, and disassembling
that mirrors the natural
cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

Web site
www.barnesfoundation.org

Anselm Kiefer, Emanation.

Castello di Rivoli -
Turin:
Gilberto Zorio

Through February 18, 2018

Like many artists who emerged in
the 1960s under the banner of Arte
Povera, Zorio has devoted himself
to finding a new vocabulary of threedimensional
form bridging visual
poetics and physics. Unending fields
of energy, his continually mutable
works harness natural forces such
as chemical reactions, fire, and magnetic
attraction to enact alchemical
transformations in materials. Held
in a state of openness, his sculptures,
which can be reformulated again and
again, break free of fixity and never
crystallize into inert objects or a
series of mere things. Time, of course,
becomes an essential collaborator
in such works--only the passage of
hours and days can fully realize their
substantive conversions. Conceived
in close collaboration with Zorio, this
retrospective spans 50 years of exper -
imentation, from important early
works in his personal collection to
new site-specific installations conceived
for the Castello in which shifting
light and shadow become as
potently volatile as sulfur, lead, iron,
and phosphorous.

Though Fontana is best known for
his slashed canvases, the Concetti
spaziali formed only one part of a
much broader investigation into spatial
ideas that evolved from the most
unlikely of precursors--his clay sculptures
from the 1920s. More interested
in process than subject matter,
these writhing masses of energy
aimed to liberate the sculptural surface
from its confines, drawing it into
real space. But Fontana (who first
trained as a sculptor) would never be
content simply alluding to or interacting
within surrounding space--he
had to shape, occupy, and mold it,
crafting its form as though it were anobject. His groundbreaking Ambienti
spaziali, initiated in 1949 along with
the canvases, used new light-producing
technologies (neon, UV, and television)
to transform the solidity
of existing architecture into radically
expansive experiences of void and
cosmos. Site-specific and ephemeral,
these rooms, corridors, and labyrinths
represent the most forward-looking
expression of Fontana's Spatialist
convictions. "Ambienti/Environ -
ments" offers a rare opportunity to
explore 10 of these reconstructed
environments; as colors and forms
unfold through time and space, and
perceptual clarity unravels, the only
certainty is that Fon tana's experiments
in wonder appear radically
prescient and familiar today, and no
less compelling.

The Kabakovs don't believe that art
can influence politics, but they firmly
maintain that it can change the "way
we think, we dream, and we act."
Responses to a dystopian world, their
large-scale, immersive environments
represent only a fraction of what the
husband and wife team would make
if they could. "Utopian Projects" fills
in the gaps with more than 20
maquettes of realized and unrealized
projects, including monuments, allegorical
narratives, and architectural
structures. Lovingly detailed in balsa
wood (sometimes accompanied
by moving parts, light, and sound),
these tableaux transcend model status
to operate as independent, Lilliputian
dreamscapes. Like their largescale
counterparts, the Kabakovs'
miniatures create alternative worlds
of private and shared imagination
that shift ordinary perspectives,
assumptions, and routines to look at
life, in Ilya's words "from the sidelines,
from some height, and even…
as if you were dead."

Web site
http://hirshhorn.si.edu

Ilya and Emilia Kaba -
kov, The Largest Book in the World.

Hunter East Harlem Gallery -
New York:
Futurefarmers

Through February 4, 2018

There seems to be no limit to the
range of projects produced by the art
collective Futurefarmers. Over the
last 23 years, their innovative practice
has found compelling visual
ways to "cultivate consciousness,"
using a signature blend of critical
analysis and optimistic suggestion
to tackle everything from the complicated
paths of food-production networks
and anti-war computer games
to an on-line registry of unused
arable land in San Francisco, lunchboxes
that incorporate hydrogenproducing
algae, and an "urban
thinkery" modeled on the open forum
of Simon the Shoemaker's Athens
studio, where Socrates supposedly
led discussions. Such peripatetic,
collaborative, and of-the-moment
experiential projects are scarcely the
stuff of traditional retrospectives,
so "Arrange" takes an appropriate
Futurefarmers approach, creating
a small ecosystem of interrelated
themes in which art, science, design,
and the environment intertwine.
Reflecting the group's interest in
organizational and cataloguing structures,
the show treats art objects
not only as relics of past projects, performances,
and dialogues, but also
as props/catalysts for future stories,
interpretations, and actions.

Using sculpture, film, and installation,
Pica explores the goals of enunciation
and the performative nature
of thought. She has a particular fascination
with communication breakdown:
for instance, works based on
deaf monologues and halting conversations
"talk" about inadequacies in
our ability to make contact--a point
taken to absurd heights in a semaphore
performance in which she
spells out "babble," "blabber," and
"yada yada yada." Her often participatory
projects directly intervene in
public life, staging and condensing
moments of cultural intimacy and
civic participation. "Please Open
Hurry" extends her investigation of
listening, misunderstanding, and
translation into the realm of interspecies
communication with two
bodies of work created during residencies at the Gashaka-Gumti
National Park in the rainforest of
Nigeria and the Boulder Museum
of Contemporary Art in Colorado. The
tools, communication skills, and
social systems of chimpanzees inform
these installations and sculptures,
which demonstrate once again, just
how little we differ from our closest
relations.
Web site www.ima.org.au

Amalia Pica, Workshop (detail).

The Menil Collection -
Houston:
Mona Hatoum

Through February 25, 2018

Hatoum transforms everyday domestic
objects into uncanny sculptures
that harbor a nagging sense of displacement,
uncertainty, and conflict.
No longer reassuring spaces of protection,
her domestic territories subvert
familiar forms such as chairs,
beds, and kitchen implements while
reconfiguring clean, Minimalist forms
into ciphers of ambiguity and threat.
In her surreal terrains, even the
human body becomes strangely unfamiliar
and disassociated. "Terra
Infirma," her first major U.S. show in
20 years, brings together 30 cringeinducing
sculptures and installations
from the 1990s through the present,
including Homebound, a room-size
tableau of utensils and furnishings
threaded together by a crackling wire
of live electricity, and La Grande
Broyeuse (Mouli-Julienne x 17), which
morphs a vegetable slicer into a gargantuan
instrument of torture. The
Menil, with its important collection
of Surrealist works, provides the
perfect backdrop for this in-depth
encounter with Hatoum's unruly
objects, which stand at the crossroads
where the ordinary transforms
into the poetic and the political.

Rakowitz thrives on contradiction,
weaving together popular culture,
history, and his personal experience
as an Iraqi-American in an attempt
to untangle the thorny mess of U.S./
Middle Eastern relations. His objects,
installations, and performances
(most of them presented in the public
realm) focus on invisibility as a
tool of propaganda and marginalization,
providing missing context while
instigating provocative cultural/
social collisions with the potential to
reconcile rather than destroy. From
paraSITE (customizable inflatable
shelters for the homeless that tap
into building HVAC systems) to
Enemy Kitchen (a food truck serving
Iraqi food prepared by refugee chefs
assisted by U.S. veterans), his projects
take a long view of reconciliation,
building understanding
one step at a time through personal
encounters that counter hostility
with hospitality. "Backstroke of the
West," his first major museum survey
(the resonant title comes from a
Chinese bootleg mistranslation of
Revenge of the Sith) features 10 key
works, including a replica of the
Ishtar Gate, made, like most of his
objects, from recycled Iraqi food packaging
and other detritus; The worst
condition is to pass under a sword
which is not one's own, a multi-part
installation that reveals how Star
Wars and Jules Verne fueled the
ambitions of Saddam Hussein; and
The invisible enemy should not exist,
an ongoing effort to re-create hundreds
of artifacts looted from the
National Museum of Iraq. A related
work, a 14-foot-high winged bull constructed
from more than 3,000 date
syrup cans (the original guarded Nineveh
until it was destroyed by the
Islamic State in 2015) will be installed
on London's Fourth Plinth in March.

A 2008 Turner Prize nominee, Wilkes
has raised eyebrows with her highly
charged arrangements of commonplace
items and personal artifacts. In
She's Pregnant Again, a TV combines
with a sink containing human hair, a
half-naked mannequin, and a stroller
in a tableau of almost audible judgment.
Formally precise and essentially
diaristic, Wilkes's work employs
a difficult and coded visual language,
making it what at least one critic has
called the kind of contemporary art
that "pundits pay deference to and
that deep down nobody really likes."
But uncompromising introspection
is not an end in itself for Wilkes; as
jarring as her work can be, it exerts a
strong psychological pull that creates
commonality and shared experience
from isolation. Her archetypal
approach to the rituals and banalities
of daily life--the humiliations, disappointments,
and brutalities--demonstrates
the power behind what she
calls the undefined "ancient force" of
history and memory. This exhibition, her largest American museum show
to date, presents 50 works from the
last 20 years, some repurposed and
recombined in an attempt to confound
straight-line narratives of artistic
development. Just as Wilkes throws
off that critical crutch, she also rejects
the typical framing and supports
of exhibition display in favor of direct
interaction, inviting viewers to wander
through tableaux whose borders
are as permeable and messy as life
itself.

Ai has been very busy recently--a
level of activity that doesn't reflect
well on the state of the world. He's
covered a concert hall in refugee life
jackets, made a related documentary
film (Human Flow), participated in
protest actions, and now he's issued
a bittersweet love letter to the iconic
city of immigration, defending basic
human values in the face of rising
racism, xenophobia, and nationalist
withdrawal. Wittily scathing, the
cages and gratings of "Good Fences
Make Good Neighbors" reimagine the
ominous security fence as something
playful while spreading a message
of menace to those who have never
been corralled like cattle and can't
imagine themselves on the wrong
side of a barrier. That includes the
current president, who is honored
with a gold cage visible from Trump
Tower--a fitting tribute to a man
hell-bent on making this Gilded Age
more profitable than the last. From
Manhattan to Queens, Brooklyn,
Staten Island, and the Bronx, Ai's
interventions worm their way into
the city's fabric, large-scale structures
accompanied by lamppost banners
and images of refugees in place
of advertising. Putting a human face
on the "problem" is a classic Ai strategy,
as is the twist he gives to an
intervention blocking the arch of the
Washington Square Park monument.
A cut-out silhouette of two figures
pierces this implied prison, replacing
constraint with freedom, antagonism
with camaraderie: the question is
how long the gap will remain open.

Web site
www.publicartfund.org

Ai Weiwei, Bronx Shelter 2.

The Noguchi Museum -
Long Island City, New York:
Gonzalo Fonseca

Through March 11, 2018

A voracious polymath, Fonseca
steeped himself in the natural sciences,
linguistics, and history. Beginning
in the 1960s, he translated that
quest for knowledge into enigmatic
stone sculptures. Intimate and monumental,
child-like and archetypal, his
complex fictions delve deep into the
human past in pursuit of an abstract,
universal vocabulary of forms. Like
Adolph Gottlieb and fellow Uruguayan
Joaquín Torres-García, Fonseca was
fascinated by archaeology and pictographic
systems of writing, hoping
to access unmediated truth through
direct symbols. Though the paintings
of these artists are unmistakably
Modernist productions, Fonseca's
sculptures appear inextricably
connected to an ancient world: his
miniature temples/housing tenements,
which resemble relics from
some lost civilization, echo votive
sculptures of buildings found everywhere
from Latin America to the
Mediterranean, Middle East, and
Danube Valley. In a sense, Fonseca,
who began his career as an architect,
spent his entire life trying to reverseengineer
the Tower of Babel
and return to a prelapsarian world
unsullied by the arbitrariness of
representation; instead, he managed
the opposite, building a protopostmodern
laby rinth of delicately
carved artifacts that defy interpretation.

A pioneer of conceptual art and
experimental practice in the Middle
East, Sharif, who died in 2016, ranged
widely across materials and forms
while exploring time, social action,
and mathematical systems. Rejecting
calligraphic abstraction (the dominant
regional style in the 1970s), he
pursued a contemporary vocabulary
inspired by the process-oriented
approach of British Constructivism
and the non-elitism and experimentation
of Fluxus. "I Am The Single
Work Artist," a landmark retrospective
of his diverse body of work,
includes everything from early newspaper
caricatures and comic strip
drawings to "semi-system" works,
performances, "urban archaeology"
objects, and installations built up
of everyday materials. An educator,
critic, and writer, as well as an artist,
Sharif embodied the principle of art
as life, tackling social and philosophical
issues with a hands-on, interdisciplinary
approach that extended his
personal example and practice into
the wider world; his mentoring
and support organizations continue
his work.